Many decades back, churches, schools and other buildings with a need to display an outdoor message often chose a sign making system utilizing characters silk screened onto metal pieces in a block chamfer style. Each piece had a crimp in the top of the metal which formed a hook to fit over the existing rails of a message panel. This allowed for a finished sign to be displayed within minutes, and a quick change of information was not very time-consuming. A popular version of these signs provided white letters and numbers on black backgrounds. This was the model for Announcement Board JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. There are two different width blank panels on the broken and solid bars for those who wish to kern the letters tight to form a ribbon, however they were designed to have slight spacing in order to emulate the hand assembly of those vintage sign panels.

Sneakers was a typeface that I originally drew all the way back in 2005, with a release in 2006. Its most recent iteration, Sneakers Pro was released in 2009. Since then, the idea of reworking the design has lingered in the back of my head, but I wanted to add additional flexibility and value to anything offered beyond the originals. Sneakers Max does just that and I am happy to see it released and available to everyone. Sneakers Max raises the bar in terms of functionality… incorporating all of the options found in Sneakers Pro (e.g. Small Caps and a biform/unicase located now in Titling Alternates), but it expands the character offering, improves on letter designs (everything was redrawn) and explores more flexible settings by providing 5 distinct counter widths to keep more uniform multi-line settings with mixed letter heights. Special thanks to Potch Auacherdkul for his additions to the original character set and for his engineering skills.

Lightbox 21 is a radical update of my previous version of a geometric sans serif. The design of the original Lightbox was fundamentally based on the idea of incorporating the proportions of the ‘Golden Ratio’ into each letterform; Lightbox 21 greatly improves on this concept by entirely abandoning it. The result is a much more readable, ‘natural’ typeface that retains elements of the original without being bound to it. Overall, Lightbox 21 has been designed to convey that classic feel of a geometric sans that makes the genre so tremendously enduring and versatile, as well as providing an effortless sense of class to whatever they are applied. Primarily intended for editorial work (i.e. short to medium length texts) or display settings, Lightbox 21 has a reasonably extensive character set, including support for Vietnamese, many currency symbols, arrows, and small caps. It also has OpenType support for nut fractions (via a stylistic set) and a barred alternate uppercase i and an alternate curled j.

Flamenco is an Andalusian art. Who think in flamenco, think in Spain. Is the result of a cultural mix: Gypsies, Arabs, Jews and Christians mixed elements of their respective cultures with traditional Andalusian elements. It incorporate dance, song and guitar music. Known for its emotional intensity, flamenco is distinguished by the graceful arm movements, ferocious stomping’s flamenco dancer, deep groans and strumming guitar. Flamenco is an art of passion. Flamenca Regular and Flamenca Luz is a brush script inspired by the flamenco dance. Flamenca is an organic, modern and casual calligraphy family font that has preserved in its glyphs its original textured appearance for a more personalized effect even more authentic. 
As an exclusively Open Type release, with 747 glyphs, it has several special alternatives for all letters with lots of possibility an infinity of combinations. There are plenty of options to allow you to create something unique and special: standard and discretionary ligatures, several swashes, initial and terminal forms and stylistics alternates for each letter, catchwords, ornaments that can be added to the beginning or end of each letter, and much more. Ornaments has been created inspired in the bars of the Andalusian patios where flamenco is danced. These lovely fonts have already an extended character set to support Central and Eastern as well as Western European languages. 
As a whole, Flamenca was made to make your project more beautiful and attractive! Have fun with it! Flamenca is fancy, delicious & fresh!

The Treasury script waited over 130 years to be digitized, and the Canada Type crew is very proud to have done the honors. And then some. After seven months of meticulous work on some of the most fascinating letter forms ever made, we can easily say that Treasury is the most ambitious, educational and enjoyable type journey we've embarked upon, and we're certain you will be quite happy with the results. Treasury goes beyond being a mere revival of a typeface. Though the original Treasury script is quite breathtaking in its own right, we decided to bring it into the computer age with much more style and functionality than just another lost script becoming digital. The Treasury System is an intuitive set of fonts that takes advantage of the most commonly used feature of today's design software: Layering. Please do help yourself to the PDF and images in the MyFonts gallery for a quick look at the some of the limitless possibilities Treasury has to offer, from simple attractive elegance expressed in the main script, all the way into mysteriously magnificent calligraphic plates. To date in digital type history, this is the most comprehensive and versatile work of its kind. Every designer loves many options to experiment. Experimentation has never been as much fun and productive as it is with Treasury. If you're "compudling" your initial ideas for a layout, or you're just an alphabet fan who loves spending time with letters, working with Treasury is very inspiring and fulfilling. Some of Treasury's features are: - No more endless searching for initial caps that fit your project. The Treasury System lets you build your own initial caps, in any combination of colors, fills, linings or dimensions you like, with a few simple clicks of the mouse. - With two base styles and nine layer fonts, the Treasury System set helps you produce endless possibilities of alternation and variation in dimension, color, and calligraphic combinations to fit your layout's exact needs, down to the very last detail. - 12 pre-combined Treasury fonts are also there to help and inspire layout artists who love shortcuts and don't want to fiddle with too many layers in their layout. Available in small packages on their own, or as part of the complete Treasury package, these 12 fonts can start you up on your way to discovering the perfect fit for your layout. - Every single letter in the Treasury System comes with at least one alternative. Some characters have even three or four alternates. Although the main character set is an authentic rendition of Ihlenburg's 1874 classic, we made sure to include a treasure trove of alternates for maximum usability. - The most gorgeous set of numerals we have seen in a long, long time. The Treasury numbers are what really turned us onto this project in the first place. - Treasury Pro, the incredibly sophisticated OpenType version, combines the complete Treasury System into a single font, programmed for compatibility with Adobe's latest CS and CS2 software programs. Over 2000 characters in one font, for thousands of possibilities. Setting the ideal elegant wordmark, logotype, intitial cap, or headline, no matter how simple or complex, is as easy as taking a minute or two to push a few buttons in Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. We can go on endlessly about the beauty and functionality of this Treasury set, but we really cannot do it justice with words. So try Treasury for yourself and see the amazing possibilities of fun and creativity it has. It can be used pretty much anywhere - signs, book covers, certificates, music inserts, movie posters, greeting cards, invitations, etc. Much thanks are due to the generous and considerable help Canada Type received from the Harvard Library in Boston, Klingspor Museum in Frankfurt, and many type hobbyists and researchers in Canada, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Without them it would was near-impossible to track down the lost history of Hermann Ihlenburg, the most prolific German/American type designer and punch cutter of the 19th century. We hope Mr. Ihlenburg is proudly smiling down on us from type designer heaven.

When the original Aaux was introduced in 2002, I intended to go back and expand the family to offer more versatility. Years went by before I was willing to pick it up again and invest the proper time into building a viable and useful recut. Just putting a new designation and tweaking a few glyphs here and there would not do the designer or the typeface justice; instead, I chose to redraw each glyph's skeleton from scratch for the four main subsets of the super family along with their italics. Each glyph across the super family is 'connected at the hip' with each style—each character carries the no frills, simple architecture that endeared so many users to it. The new recut expands the family to an enormous 72 typefaces! The original has spawned Compressed, Condensed and Wide subsets—all with corresponding weights—for complete flexibility. Additionally, all of the original weight variants have all been incorporated within the OpenType shell: Small Caps and Old Style Figures are there along with new tabular figures, numerators and denominators, expanded f-ligatures and a complete Central European character set.

“A couple of years ago, when I was designing a package for a marmalade range, I started having a go at creating a typeface that would suit the package I had in mind. The whole process was intensely appealing to me: from merely using typefaces as an intricate part of my work as an art director, I started exploring the function of each and every element that a typeface consists of. The two things on my mind in designing a typeface for a marmalade brand were firstly, that I wanted it to have a hand-written feel, so as to exude that old-fashioned, homemade quality, and secondly, that it ought to have a certain sweetness and gentleness that would match the product. However, PF Scandal managed to outgrow its original inspiration. As I continued working on it, I toned down some of its elements to make it more versatile. And so, PF Scandal evolved into a typeface that has a contemporary, and yet handwritten look, which makes it suitable for a wide range of uses. The ‘Pro’ version comes with the full array of European characters including Latin, Greek and Cyrillic as well as 120 matching pictograms". -A.S.

The signs of the Bosnian pyramids The pyramid researcher, Semir Osmanagic, began excavations in 2005 in Visoko, Bosnia, 30 km North from Sarajevo. Mr. Senad Hodocic, the curator at the local museum, pointed out at the pyramidal shape of the Visocica Mountain, which grabbed Osmanagic's attention. It is also suspected that the four adjacent hills, covered by plants and greenery, also hide the pyramids. The main sites of the excavations are called the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, and the results achieved so far have already proved that those structures are man-made and artificial. The Pyramid of the Sun is bigger and older than the pyramid in Giza, which was built by Pharaoh Cheops 4600 years ago. Gábor Szakács, who went to the site in June 2006 for the first time, found the symbols on the megalithic blocks inside the tunnel of the Pyramid of the Sun, which correspond to the ancient Hungarian runic writings. Further information about the Bosnian Pyramids is available at the website http://www.piramidasunca.ba/. There are also researchers who do not accept the subject of the Bosnian pyramids. Time will tell the truth.

When the original Aaux was introduced in 2002, I intended to go back and expand the family to offer more versatility. Years went by before I was willing to pick it up again and invest the proper time into building a viable and useful recut. Just putting a new designation and tweaking a few glyphs here and there would not do the designer or the typeface justice; instead, I chose to redraw each glyph's skeleton from scratch for the four main subsets of the super family along with their italics. Each glyph across the super family is 'connected at the hip' with each style—each character carries the no frills, simple architecture that endeared so many users to it. The new recut expands the family to an enormous 72 typefaces! The original has spawned Compressed, Condensed and Wide subsets—all with corresponding weights—for complete flexibility. Additionally, all of the original weight variants have all been incorporated within the OpenType shell: Small Caps and Old Style Figures are there along with new tabular figures, numerators and denominators, expanded f-ligatures and a complete Central European character set.

Guanabara is the third release of Plau Type Foundry. It started from the need of a wayfinding typeface that had personality enough to be the brand typeface for a city. The city of Rio de Janeiro, with its never-ending curves and all year long summer weather provided the constraints and requirements of this typeface. From there, it evolved to be a workhorse, with 8 weights from Thin to Black and matching true italics. It just had to have the features that all us designers have grown to love, such as alternate letters (a, g and r for the romans), tabular and proportional figures in lining and oldstyle set-ups as well as small caps, fractions and all that jazz (I mean, samba). And it needed to be recognizable and distinct. For that, design features like tapered R legs, capitals with classic proportions and calligraphic finishes on the terminals proved crucial. And last, but not least, like Rio, it had to welcome many cultures. We came to think of it as the “Typeface from Ipanema”, with a classic, timeless look, swinging elegance and joyful attitude.

The Copperplate penmanship style has a distinctive flow and character. Many years of steady and patient practice allow calligraphers to achieve the flow, direction, sequencing, and speed required from the copperplate ductus, to achieve its distinctive, elegant, fluid aesthetic. Nautica is a monumental new script from Resistenza, which builds on the creator’s accomplished penmanship skills. The delicate strokes have high contrast and an extravagant personality. These letterforms invoke 18th-century sailors logbooks and the nostalgic correspondence those at sea sent home to their loved ones, with letters looping and rolling into one another like the waves these intrepid adventurers voyaged on. Nautica’s ornate feel is perfectly suited to romantic applications, and with three weights, one set of useful navigational icons and some nautical knots Nautica will allow you to create rich and cohesive graphics for those 'tying-the-knot' or in any display context which requires some sophistication. Nautica allows you to achieve the complexity and flow of copperplate calligraphy with OpenType features. Supreme swashes inspired by brush pen stroke, and exhaustive alternates, with over 900 glyphs and extensive language support, Nautica offers full professional typographic features, for a natural ‘written’ look. Check out also “Voguing” & “Nautica”

Pétala Pro took its first steps almost ten years ago. Since then, the quest for perfection has forced several interruptions. It was necessary recalculate the route, tread other ways, discover new maps, and make easy curves. In the end, a new milestone on typeface design was reached. Pétala Pro combines readability with a gentle but strong personality. The smooth and balanced forms shares space with expressive ink traps. The 18 styles of the family – from Thin to Black – allow the flexibility needed to complex design briefs. When designing the different weights, rather than automated solutions, ​​subtle adjustments were made to value the optical qualities of each style. Such care makes all the difference under extreme conditions. The wide variety of alternates makes Pétala Pro even more versatile. All the styles come with a lot of advanced OpenType features such as stylistics sets, localized forms, contextual alternates, ligatures, small caps, numbers, fractions and more. Pétala Pro brings your message with efficiency and personality for a multi-language environment and in any medium or support, such as video, mobile and computers screens. Pétala Pro is the ideal choice for editorial, advertising, branding and corporate identity.

Innova. A new grotesque for the 21st century. More open. More squarish. More legible. After the many grotesques which have been designed over the years, is it still possible to improve this genre? Innova is a new design — a contribution to the tradition of grotesque typefaces. It is an attempt to improve both this genre’s legibility and versatility. Innova consists of two families: Innova and Innova Alt. The Innova family has rectangular dots. The Innova Alt family has round dots — making its personality a little friendlier. Innova is well suited for both text and display use — for graphic design, corporate identity design, magazines, newspapers, books, reports, editorials, web, advertising, signage, etc. Innova includes 16 uprights and 16 matching italics. It includes small caps, arbitrary fractions, and extensive language support. It includes nine numerical styles: lining and oldstyle figures (proportional and tabular), small cap figures, superiors, inferiors, numerators, and denominators. Innova embodies the renewal needed for the traditional grotesques. It is a grotesque which is fit for the 21st century. In order to see whether you agree with this, please try the free Innova Alt Demi. For more information about Innova, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

There is something straight-forward and no-nonsense about slab serifed typefaces. Calligraphic designs, on the other hand, evoke a sense of humanity and immediacy - even intimacy. ITC Napoleone Slab combines both slab serif and calligraphic design traits into a single typeface design. Heady stuff. The result is unlike almost any other slab serif typeface. According to designer Silvio Napoleone, “The concept developed from my explorations as a student in an independent lettering class. I sketched many historical letterforms by brush. I continued experimenting for several years after, sketching by hand and on the computer. Eventually, I chose the slab serif for production because of its distinctive design quality.” ITC Napoleone Slab is exceptionally versatile. The family is economical in width and contains true italic designs, oldstyle numbers and a suite of special ligatures. According to Silvio, “Napoleone Slab was designed to work well at all sizes, and in on-screen applications.” Silvio currently lives in Toronto, where he works for a “young, enthusiastic interactive firm.” His designs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work was also part of a traveling exhibit for the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

A brighter slab n’ sans in 18 styles Referred to as Egyptian’s in the early years of the nineteenth century, today slab serifs are primarily used in display sizes but seldom used in body text. With Mislab, Xavier Dupré has designed a brighter and more legible slab serif than most. Mislab aptly combines the strength of a slab serif with the lightness of a sans serif. Bold and thick serifs make for strong impact in display uses while performing extremely well under the most stressful body text conditions. A slight cursive feel adds spice to the text while its delicate rounded rectangular structure is naturally adapted to screen displays. The capitals have fully assumed serifs while the lowercases have more discreet versions. Notable features include sanserif endings on the lowercase a, c, e & s, inducing fluidity and enhanced readability. This highly versatile typeface brings clarity to headlines. Mislab will provide foolproof stability to your layouts. Mislab, a new design by Xavier Dupré Type Directors Club 2014 Tokyo TDC 2014 Communication Arts Typography Awards 2014 Club des directeurs artistiques, 45e palmarès Slanted: Contemporary Typefaces #25

The Vinča script is a cache of symbols found belonging to the Vinča culture of the central Balkans over 7000 years ago. The symbols have been a topic of debate amongst historians. The Tărtăria tablets are three tablets discovered in 1961 in the village of Tărtăria(Hungarian: Alsótatárlaka). This is about 30 km (19 mi) from Alba Iulia in Romania.The tablets, dated to around 5300 BC, have symbols inclay: the Vinča symbols. Some claim they are a yet undeciphered language. If this is so, they would be the earliest known form of writing. In 1908 similar symbols were found during excavations, by Miloje Vasić (1869–1956) in Vinča. This is a suburb of Belgrade (Serbia), some 300 km from Turdaș. Later, more were found in another part of Belgrade. Since 1875 over one hundred and fifty Vinča sites have been found in Serbia alone. Many, including Vinča itself, have not been fully excavated. The culture of the whole area is called the Vinča culture. Although some of these symbols look exactly the same as some letters in Etruscan, Greek, and Aramaic, they are generally regarded as a an original, independent development.

Where most typefaces are designed by just one individual, quite a few people have been involved in perfecting Cheltenham over the times. In 1896, the architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue created the initial design for Ingalls Kimball at the Cheltenham Press. Just a few years later, Morris Fuller Benton devised a full family of Cheltenhams for ATF. This is the basis of the design we have today. In 1975, Tony Stan revived this classic typeface and did what was customary at the time: increase the x-height and make the Cheltenham family more regular. SoftMaker updated the design yet again in 2012. The result is Cheltenham Pro, a typeface that is exceptionally readable and holds up even in adverse printing conditions. SoftMaker’s Cheltenham Pro typeface family contains OpenType layout tables for sophisticated typography. It also comes with a huge character set that covers not only Western European languages, but also includes Central European, Baltic, Croatian, Slovene, Romanian, and Turkish characters. Case-sensitive punctuation signs for all-caps titles are included as well as many fractions, an extensive set of ligatures, and separate sets of tabular and proportional digits.

Biwa is a new straight-sided family of formally nuanced grotesk typefaces. Biwa’s lighter weights feel subdued, cool in tone, and neutral, while the heavier weights are more robust and full of personality. Developed over the past few years by Ian Lynam and James Todd, the 14-member Biwa family and the accompanying 14-member Biwa Display family are paeans to the immediate moment when phototype arrived on the global scene — partially smooth and partially machined. Biwa and Biwa Display are neutral in tone, have enlarged x-heights, and look amazing on-screen and in print. Each weight is designed to be highly readable in print and on-screen. The italic variations are true italics, having a single-storied italic a and have been designed for smooth, fluid reading and text-setting. Lovingly spaced and kerned, the Biwa family works equally well for text typesetting and for display design work. Languages supported include Western European, Central, and South European as well as Vietnamese. The entire family is comprised of a range of weights and a matching display family that features rounded terminals for large-scale display work. An agate version of Biwa Black is provided for free.

When the original Aaux was introduced in 2002, I intended to go back and expand the family to offer more versatility. Years went by before I was willing to pick it up again and invest the proper time into building a viable and useful recut. Just putting a new designation and tweaking a few glyphs here and there would not do the designer or the typeface justice; instead, I chose to redraw each glyph's skeleton from scratch for the four main subsets of the super family along with their italics. Each glyph across the super family is 'connected at the hip' with each style—each character carries the no frills, simple architecture that endeared so many users to it. The new recut expands the family to an enormous 72 typefaces! The original has spawned Compressed, Condensed and Wide subsets—all with corresponding weights—for complete flexibility. Additionally, all of the original weight variants have all been incorporated within the OpenType shell: Small Caps and Old Style Figures are there along with new tabular figures, numerators and denominators, expanded f-ligatures and a complete Central European character set.

Soprani is a unique typeface inspired by a plaque found in New Zealand dating from the 1920s. The design was contemporized and brought 100 years into the future. The serifs are dramatically flared at the end of the stems, while in the middle, they contract. This leads to a unique shimmering effect that draws the eye and catches your user's attention. This typeface meets the demand for unique serif types that are both eye-catching and delicate. It’s a display face that's ideal for very contemporary work. This typeface has plenty of alternates and has a full complement of OpenType features. The 1920s inspire the design, with a bit of art nouveau and arts and crafts, yet the typeface is designed to meet contemporary design requirements. It has a unique elegance and the letterforms are condensed more than most. Soprani is suggested for table books, menus, and various promotional materials, newspapers, television, motion pictures and other media. There is a wide range of widths and weights available, from the thin, which is delicate and graceful, to a bold and robust black. Production assistance by Lucas Azevedo and ikern.

Becky is a versatile display type designed to appeal to to a young audience of creative, up-to-date people. Geared towards the world of advertising and retail. It is well-suited for large headlines, branding, logos, publishing and short texts. With a modern look inspired by such geometric classics as Futura and an overall edgy, informal quality (seen in details like the subtle curve of its verticals), Becky stands out as a fun, unique type. Becky is a 10-variant type family that comes in 5 weights: light, regular, medium, bold and extra bold. It features 445 characters in total. Becky features 2 alternative stylistic sets: SS1 in which the diagonals in the letters X, Y, V, W, R, K, y,x,v,w and k shift from curved to straight in order to achieve a more formal look, especially useful for smaller texts. SS2 offers alternate glyphs for I, E, J, e, j and t, further expanding the possibilities of the typography. Learn about upcoming releases, work in progress and get to know us better! On Instagram W Foundry On facebook W Foundry wtypefoundry.com

Made up of sixteen individual weights and spread over three different optical sizes, Essonnes is designed to bring utility back to the Didot genre. It’s a common belief among designers that Didones don’t work for text. This wasn’t true in 1819 and it isn’t true today. Like its forbearers, Essonnes is a truly optical family—not just a study in adjusting contrast. The text and display weights have been designed from the ground up for their intended roles. This means that everything from the height of the uppercase & lowercase letters have been specifically tuned for their intended purpose. Like many typefaces, Essonnes started after falling in love with a piece of history. In this case, it was the eccentric forms of Pierre Didot’s Type and the evolution of the High contrast Didone throughout the 19th century. It was out of curiosity and love for these forms that led to the first draft of what would become Essonnes back in 2011. These unique situations—screens, modern printing methods, the previous 200 years of typographic innovation since the original design, my own life experiences—have led to a typeface that, while based on history, is not stuck in it.

The Vondelpark is the famous Amsterdam city park, 47 hectares stretching out from Leidseplein to the Amstelveenseweg. It was founded in 1864 when a group of well-to-do Amsterdam citizens got together and bought land at the (then) edge of the city centre in order to create a park ‘for riding and strolling’. Designed by architect J.D. Zocher, it opened officially in 1865. The park received its name two years later when a statue of Dutch writer Joost van den Vondel was placed in the park. In the 1960s and 1970s the Vondelpark became a symbol and epicenter of the hippie flower power era. The park was declared a state monument in 1996. Donald DBXL was intrigued by the handmade iron nameplate lettering on the park’s entrance gates, and decided to design VLNL Vondelpark in its glory. The somewhat clumsy iron letters were not revived as is but optimized to turn it into a useful typeface. The all-caps serif with a deliberate constructed feel, contains a Positional Open Type feature that places half circles on the vertical stems, at the beginning and end of a word, to enliven the rhythm.

When the original Aaux was introduced in 2002, I intended to go back and expand the family to offer more versatility. Years went by before I was willing to pick it up again and invest the proper time into building a viable and useful recut. Just putting a new designation and tweaking a few glyphs here and there would not do the designer or the typeface justice; instead, I chose to redraw each glyph's skeleton from scratch for the four main subsets of the super family along with their italics. Each glyph across the super family is 'connected at the hip' with each style—each character carries the no frills, simple architecture that endeared so many users to it. The new recut expands the family to an enormous 72 typefaces! The original has spawned Compressed, Condensed and Wide subsets—all with corresponding weights—for complete flexibility. Additionally, all of the original weight variants have all been incorporated within the OpenType shell: Small Caps and Old Style Figures are there along with new tabular figures, numerators and denominators, expanded f-ligatures and a complete Central European character set.

Since the release of his first typeface, Zulia Pro, Joluvian has spent his time dedicatedly experimenting with an array of calligraphic styles and typography, before starting on his second typeface, Salamat. The journey began on a trip to Asia, where Joluvian was inspired by his time in the Philippines. After a series of discarded type sketches, the first stroke of what is now Salamat was then born.   What at first was a quick sketch, over time, evolved into a stylized typography; that lends to humanistic-expressive calligraphy, optimized with wide variety of swash capitals, contextuals ligatures, ascending and descending, starting and ending letters and a wide range of characters for each glyph. Salamat provides the user absolute freedom to play, create words, sentences and even very stylized paragraphs. Giving one the freedom with type, the way the Philippines gave Joluvian the freedom to explore calligraphy and typography.   Joluvian considers Salamat a new benchmark in his career. He now possesses more typography maturity, and a refined focus to put into practice all the knowledge acquired in his recent years of study, for this and much more salamat ('thank you' in Tagalog) to the Philippines.

insigne returns to Aviano’s classically inspired forms with this sans serif variant. Wide and geometric, Aviano Sans is perfect for any job that calls for a chic and dignified sans serif as seen in this demonstration video. Aviano Sans has consistently topped insigne’s best-seller chart for more than seven years, earning its stripes as an expressive and versatile typeface that belongs in any designer’s tool chest. Aviano Sans' five weights of Regular, Thin, Light, Bold, and Black include 42 Art Deco-inspired alternate characters that can turn you and your project into a force to be reckoned with. The typeface family also includes 40 unique ligatures that add a bit of swagger to this serious sans. insigne released the first Aviano in early 2007. Its beautifully drawn extended letterforms were a hit with designers, and Aviano quickly became one of insigne’s most popular offerings. The simplified variant of Aviano Sans followed soon after, paring down the structure around the core concept. The Aviano series continues to develop further today with new variants on this classic form. Be sure to check out the rest of the Aviano series, including Aviano, Aviano Serif, Aviano Flare, and Aviano Contrast.

Quieta is a humanist serif typeface inspired by the aesthetics of Italian Renaissance and by the empowering history of the painter Artemisa Gentileschi, first woman to be admitted to an Academy of Fine Arts in Italy. The designer, Maria Chiara Fantini, has used sharp flat-nib calligraphic strokes to add a vibrant contemporary vibe to the traditional humanist proportions. Classical details (such as the beak of the “e” and the angled stress of the “o”), are balanced by a modern and readable low-contrast design, developed in a range of six weights with a matching set of true italics. A Display weight, with lighter shapes and stronger contrast has been developed excel in logos, headlines and captions. The wide array of alternate, decorative and swash glyphs and the full coverage of over 200 extended latin languages make Quieta a solid, highly readable and elegant typeface perfect for body text both on the screen and on the printed page. Graceful and powerful at the same time, this typeface family is ready to help you when in need of the timeless appeal of a self-conscious feminine elegance.

Montague Script takes its name from a small hilltown of western Massachusetts rich in culture and history. I lived in this beloved community for a number of years and it’s where I first began my study of calligraphy and lettering. While most brush scripts take their cue from mid-twentieth century samples, Montague Script is a fresh, contemporary alternative. It comes directly from lettering written with a #3 sable brush on smooth vellum and is digitized with the same sensibility a lettering artist writes with. Montague reflects a dynamic interplay between form and rhythm not usually associated with type. Words suggest a baseline, yet are not bound by it. Beginnings, endings, alternates and ligatures come in as needed while you type. Many more alternates are available in the glyph palette of most current graphic software. Exuberant swash versions of upper and lowercase letters, as well as ligatures can be accessed through both the type and glyph palettes. Montague Script is a natural for advertising, point of purchase displays, packaging and logo design, cards, invitations, journals and much more. You will be delighted at how well it can dress up a project and how easily it sets.

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

Harald Geisler wants to make you as brilliant as Albert Einstein. Or at least let you write like him. Or at least write in his handwriting. — The Wall Street Journal Imagine you could write like Albert Einstein. The Albert Einstein font enables you to do exactly that. In an joined effort, creators Harald Geisler and Elizabeth Waterhouse, spend over 7 years on finalising the project. It was made possible with the help of the Albert Einstein Archive, the Albert Einstein Estate, and funding by a successful Kickstarter Campaign of 2, 334 backers. The outcome was worth the effort: a font unprecedented in aesthetic technique and a benchmark for handwriting fonts. To create a result that is true to the original, Harald Geisler developed a method to analyse the movement of the famous writer. Letter by letter, every glyph was digitally re-written to create a seamlessly working font. It is the only font that holds 5 variations for each lowercase and uppercase-letter, number, and punctuation sign. Each based on meticulous detail to the original samples of Albert Einstein’s handwriting. The OpenType contextual alternates feature dynamically arranges the letters automatically as you type to ensure that no repeated letter forms are placed next to each other. Stylistic variants can also be accessed through stylistic sets. The font has 10 fine-tuned weights ranging from extra-light to fine and extra bold to heavy. The result is a vivid handwritten text true to the original. A PDF documentation, showing step by step how the font was made and comparing numerous original samples, is included with the font and can be downloaded here. The work has been recognised internationally, by press, Einstein fans, and designers. Some quotes used in images: “The font is beautiful“ — Washington Post “If you could write like Einstein, would it help you to think like Einstein?” — The Times (London) “Finally, if your colleagues aren’t taking you seriously, then perhaps you could start sending e-mails in a new font that mimics the handwriting of Albert Einstein.” — Physics World “Geisler and Waterhouse are really asking deeper questions about the diminishing (or evolving) role of our flawed, variable penmanship as a conduit of thought in today’s pixel-perfect landscape.” — QUARTZ “Your writing will look imaginative — which is exactly what Einstein would've wanted." — Huffington Post Arts & Culture "Forget Myriad Pro, Helvetica or Futura. The only font you’ll ever need" — Gizmodo “Capture a piece of Einstein's genius in your own writing." — Mashable

While researching the history of Onitsuka Tiger's branding and graphic design, I came across an odd, yet highly appealing piece of custom lettering on the company's ONICK ski boots from the 1970s. Reminiscent of aspects of the typeface Black-Out by Eli Carrico (released by my type foundry Wordshape), yet vertically compressed with razor-sliced counters and odd stencil element that makes up one of the legs of the "K", the ONICK lettering is a potential source for an intriguing modular font. I immediately thought of Ryoichi Tsunekawa as a potential collaborator to bring this piece of lettering to full-fledged life in the contemporary context. Based in Nagoya, Tsunekawa runs an independent type foundry called Dharma Type, including three specialized foundry sub-labels: Flat-It, devoted to display lettering; Prop-A-Ganda, a series of fonts inspired by and based on retro propaganda posters, movie posters, retail sign lettering & advertisements in the early 20th century; and Holiday Type, a series of decorative and retro scripts for holiday use. The past year has seen a flurry of notice of his work abroad, having been featured in both MyFonts' "Creative Characters" and YouWorkForThem's newsletter. As the work of most Japanese type designers is almost wholly unnoticed abroad, for Tsunekawa to be interviewed by two of the most popular type distribution companies in the world is definitely something beyond the norm. Perhaps it is because he works independently, or perhaps it is due to the charm and friendliness with which his typefaces are infused. Either way, this attention is both welcome and appreciated. Beyond mere charm, Tsunekawa's work is nuanced, detailed, and accessible due to its high level of finish. His fonts stand apart from his contemporaries in Latin typeface design in Japan due to his fascination with pop, vernacular and historical lettering from "non-pure" sources- whereas type designers like Kunihiko Okano and Akira Kobayashi have spent years analyzing the essence of Western letterform construction and unlocking the essence of Latin forms, Tsunekawa views surface and the awkward nature of his sources as being of value, as well. His irreverence for the formal doctrines of history imbue his typeface designs with a rugged inventiveness that would be missed by most- glyphs without source designs are guessed at and approximated, often in a manner wildly divergent from what Western eyes would assume. It is in these moments that I find sheer delight in Tsunekawa’s work and what make me most pleased to invite him aboard Neojaponisme and Onitsuka Tiger’s type development project. His assorted typefaces show an eclecticism in finish and as holistic systems- Tsunekawa's return email to me about the proposed type project showed a digital sketch of how a completed typeface family from the source lettering might look, rendered with an effortlessness and dedication to detail that belies a skilled craftsperson. Further development showed Tsunekawa’s rigor- the typeface in development rapidly featured glyphs ignored by many: a full set of fractions, Eastern European diacritics and accents, superior and inferior numerals, alternate characters, and custom ligatures - all designed with regulated, detailed spacing. ONICK is a typeface Tsunekawa should be proud of- an homage to a moment in history rendered in the absolute best fashion. We are proud to present it to the world! --Ian Lynam